5 ms·

22 years later, we still don’t have a good way to pay for content!

soneil 8y ago
I think we do - advertising is still a perfectly legitimate way to pay for 'free' content., plus subscriptions where they make sense. The current problem isn't that we can't or won't pay, or we can't or won't accept advertising. It's that each generation of adtech becomes more and more user-hostile until we're forced to fight back. So the popup became the pop-under, and devolved into popup bombs until browsers were forced to act. Tracking has gone from associating an ad-view with its context, to growing that context across their entire ad network until they've profiled exactly what demographics and markets you fit into, and browsers are starting to fight back. It's not that we won't accept advertising. It's that advertising is in a constant race to the bottom. And I think - I hope - we're about hitting the bottom of the current generation of adtech.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ValentineC 8y ago
  > So the popup became the pop-under, and devolved into popup bombs until browsers were forced to act. Apart from NoScript, are there other good ways to handle "subscribe to my mailing list" modals?
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  No, advertising is inherently problematic, and always has been. * It's intrusive. * It's distracting. * It promotes a host of anti-usability features * It's creepy, and you're creeping me out. * Ads themselves price-discriminate -- though how and when I can never be certain * The mechanisms of advertising networks pose security issues * The goods and services which are most highly advertised are those which I'm least inclined to buy. * It's not relevant. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/24107v/forbes_asks_why_do_programmers_hate_advertising/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/24107v/forbes_... Adding to the above, from four years ago, I've since realised that advertising: * Promotes crap content. * Kills quality content. * Undermines truth and liberal democracy. Supports and sustains demagoguery, fascism, and institutional oppression. See Dwight McDonald, "A Theory of Mass Culturei" (https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDonald_-_A_Theory_of_Mass_Culture.pdf https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon...) (1953) (PDF), Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totaltarianism (http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=arendt%20origins%20totalitarianism http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=arendt%20origins%20tota...), and Gerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television* (http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=Mander+arguments+elimination+television&open=0&res=25&view=simple&phrase=1&column=def http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=Mander+arguments+elimin...), for starters. Hamilton Holt's excellent 1909 lecture, "Commercialism and Journalism", available from the Internet Archive, addresses most of the modern complaints against advertising, at a time when it was just beginning to massively re-shape (and, to be fair, enable) the modern media landscape. https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt
- earenndil 8y ago
  Firefox and safari have done a few relatively small things. Chrome is owned by google, and edge doesn't seem to have done anything.
pouta 8y ago
Is subscription not a good solution? The flow of subscriptions just gets easier and faster for the readers.
- galfarragem 8y ago
  Most people won't pay for a subscription and most times the content is too sparse to organize as one despite providing some value (e.g. niche blogs). I've 2 niche blogs and tried several ways of monetisation along the years. I only kept a direct ad (that adblocks can't detect) and amazon affiliates. I ditched Adsense (from 50€ it dropped to 1€/month) and tried donations (patreon, buymeacoffee, paypal) but it's not the right niche for that (art students).
  - pouta 8y ago
    You hit the right point: sparse content is the enemy of the subscription. If you keep your content focused/niche enough I think overtime you should have a nice following. I would love to discuss the problems with your two blogs, I'm actually trying to solve them.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- honestoHeminway 8y ago
  Subscription decouples the reward for quality from the consumer. A good system would create payment by time && Lines Read minus some Rewared for Content produced as Result by the User (Not emotional Engagment drivel in some comment, but actually contributing to a discussion). Good Content would be peer reviewed by its readers, like it happens here on HN, and those reviews would in return garant those contributing some discount or even reward. We are so far away from that like earth from mars.
  - pouta 8y ago
    Wouldn't it be the other way around? The subscription explicitly ties the reward to the quality. Imagine this: (1) The publisher starts writing quality content in order to gather as much subscribers as possible. (2) Th publisher gets a comfortable amount of subscribers. So it starts to wind down the content quality, thus reducing his costs. (3) Now the users aren't getting the quality they are paying for. (4) Maybe slowly, but surely the subscribers will cancel their subscriptions and ultimately lose their trust in the publication itself. (5) The world is balanced once again. Now this last point is important, the relationship between the producer and the consumer is based on trust.
dredmorbius 8y ago
Taxws on wealth & income. Information is a public good. https://www.scribd.com/document/370801872/Joseph-Stiglitz-Knowledge-as-a-Global-Public-Good https://www.scribd.com/document/370801872/Joseph-Stiglitz-Kn...
- pouta 8y ago
  The Government should guarantee the creation informative news, or what people usually call "hot news" (a tsunami, who's new president, a new law that changed, anything that is essential to keep the community informed). It already happens in Portugal for eg. LUSA News Agency is a funded by the Government in order to guarantee exactly what I just described. LUSA is not perfect but it's role should be treated as a public good.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    There's a surprising history here of which most people are almost wholly ignorant. Robert W. McChesney is among the few scholars who've explored this in depth in the US, see for example: "The Debate Over Public Policy and the Emergence of Commercial Broadcasting in the United States, 1927-1935" http://www.thebhc.org/sites/default/files/beh/BEHprint/v021/p0171-p0181.pdf http://www.thebhc.org/sites/default/files/beh/BEHprint/v021/... When the BBC was formed in the UK, the concept of allowing media ownership to be in the hands of private corporations was considered unthinkable. Government funding has its own set of considerations, though in balance it seems generally preferable, most especially if funding and control are separated.
rasz 8y ago
patreon is pretty solid

I think we do - advertising is still a perfectly legitimate way to pay for 'free' content., plus subscriptions where they make sense. The current problem isn't that we can't or won't pay, or we can't or won't accept advertising. It's that each generation of adtech becomes more and more user-hostile until we're forced to fight back. So the popup became the pop-under, and devolved into popup bombs until browsers were forced to act. Tracking has gone from associating an ad-view with its context, to growing that context across their entire ad network until they've profiled exactly what demographics and markets you fit into, and browsers are starting to fight back. It's not that we won't accept advertising. It's that advertising is in a constant race to the bottom. And I think - I hope - we're about hitting the bottom of the current generation of adtech.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ValentineC 8y ago
> So the popup became the pop-under, and devolved into popup bombs until browsers were forced to act. Apart from NoScript, are there other good ways to handle "subscribe to my mailing list" modals?
dredmorbius 8y ago
No, advertising is inherently problematic, and always has been. * It's intrusive. * It's distracting. * It promotes a host of anti-usability features * It's creepy, and you're creeping me out. * Ads themselves price-discriminate -- though how and when I can never be certain * The mechanisms of advertising networks pose security issues * The goods and services which are most highly advertised are those which I'm least inclined to buy. * It's not relevant. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/24107v/forbes_asks_why_do_programmers_hate_advertising/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/24107v/forbes_... Adding to the above, from four years ago, I've since realised that advertising: * Promotes crap content. * Kills quality content. * Undermines truth and liberal democracy. Supports and sustains demagoguery, fascism, and institutional oppression. See Dwight McDonald, "A Theory of Mass Culturei" (https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDonald_-_A_Theory_of_Mass_Culture.pdf https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon...) (1953) (PDF), Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totaltarianism (http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=arendt%20origins%20totalitarianism http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=arendt%20origins%20tota...), and Gerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television* (http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=Mander+arguments+elimination+television&open=0&res=25&view=simple&phrase=1&column=def http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=Mander+arguments+elimin...), for starters. Hamilton Holt's excellent 1909 lecture, "Commercialism and Journalism", available from the Internet Archive, addresses most of the modern complaints against advertising, at a time when it was just beginning to massively re-shape (and, to be fair, enable) the modern media landscape. https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt
earenndil 8y ago
Firefox and safari have done a few relatively small things. Chrome is owned by google, and edge doesn't seem to have done anything.

pouta 8y ago

Is subscription not a good solution? The flow of subscriptions just gets easier and faster for the readers.

galfarragem 8y ago
Most people won't pay for a subscription and most times the content is too sparse to organize as one despite providing some value (e.g. niche blogs). I've 2 niche blogs and tried several ways of monetisation along the years. I only kept a direct ad (that adblocks can't detect) and amazon affiliates. I ditched Adsense (from 50€ it dropped to 1€/month) and tried donations (patreon, buymeacoffee, paypal) but it's not the right niche for that (art students).
- pouta 8y ago
  You hit the right point: sparse content is the enemy of the subscription. If you keep your content focused/niche enough I think overtime you should have a nice following. I would love to discuss the problems with your two blogs, I'm actually trying to solve them.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
honestoHeminway 8y ago
Subscription decouples the reward for quality from the consumer. A good system would create payment by time && Lines Read minus some Rewared for Content produced as Result by the User (Not emotional Engagment drivel in some comment, but actually contributing to a discussion). Good Content would be peer reviewed by its readers, like it happens here on HN, and those reviews would in return garant those contributing some discount or even reward. We are so far away from that like earth from mars.
- pouta 8y ago
  Wouldn't it be the other way around? The subscription explicitly ties the reward to the quality. Imagine this: (1) The publisher starts writing quality content in order to gather as much subscribers as possible. (2) Th publisher gets a comfortable amount of subscribers. So it starts to wind down the content quality, thus reducing his costs. (3) Now the users aren't getting the quality they are paying for. (4) Maybe slowly, but surely the subscribers will cancel their subscriptions and ultimately lose their trust in the publication itself. (5) The world is balanced once again. Now this last point is important, the relationship between the producer and the consumer is based on trust.

dredmorbius 8y ago

Taxws on wealth & income. Information is a public good. https://www.scribd.com/document/370801872/Joseph-Stiglitz-Knowledge-as-a-Global-Public-Good https://www.scribd.com/document/370801872/Joseph-Stiglitz-Kn...

pouta 8y ago
The Government should guarantee the creation informative news, or what people usually call "hot news" (a tsunami, who's new president, a new law that changed, anything that is essential to keep the community informed). It already happens in Portugal for eg. LUSA News Agency is a funded by the Government in order to guarantee exactly what I just described. LUSA is not perfect but it's role should be treated as a public good.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  There's a surprising history here of which most people are almost wholly ignorant. Robert W. McChesney is among the few scholars who've explored this in depth in the US, see for example: "The Debate Over Public Policy and the Emergence of Commercial Broadcasting in the United States, 1927-1935" http://www.thebhc.org/sites/default/files/beh/BEHprint/v021/p0171-p0181.pdf http://www.thebhc.org/sites/default/files/beh/BEHprint/v021/... When the BBC was formed in the UK, the concept of allowing media ownership to be in the hands of private corporations was considered unthinkable. Government funding has its own set of considerations, though in balance it seems generally preferable, most especially if funding and control are separated.

rasz 8y ago

patreon is pretty solid